Games and activities used in our teaching: Background

We keep the following principles in mind when designing library workshops:

• Librarians teach 3-5 times too much: Consider what will have the greatest impact.
• Librarians should not try and clone their own expertise: Rather than demonstrating how to use resources, encourage self exploration  and develop transferable information literacy skills.
• Discussion is powerful:  Learn and discover together. We can learn a lot about students' understanding from the question they ask.
• Learning by doing is empowering: Encourage active participation through a variety of activities e.g. trying things out, getting feedback, solving problems, peer discussion and reflecting on mistakes.
• Students should be the learners, not the taught: The Librarians' role is to support and facilitate.

These four capabilities form the basis of all workshops from Foundation through to Post Graduate level.

• Thinking about the value of resources especially in academic work.
• Constructing keywords (search terms) for effective searching.
• Self exploration of resources.
• Evaluation of information found.

A game or activity has been designed for each capability at each level.